Charles Lyell and John Lubbock were both close friends and colleagues of Charles Darwin. Lubbock's pioneering work on prehistoric evolution, Pre-Historic Times, in which he coined the terms 'Neolithic' and 'Paleolithic', was published in 1865.
In the same year, Lyell engaged Arabella Buckley as his secretary and his letters after that date are usually written in her hand from dictation. Despite his failing eyesight and diminishing strength, this letter shows that his intellectual capacity was evidently undimmed and he has managed to pen a few lines to a fellow geologist in his own hand.